TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTED ARTICLES. 381 



a time when the relations between land and water were altogether 

 different,— a period that we cannot sum up in years. But if the 

 latter, the great antiquity of the implements is by no means proved, 

 and they may have belonged to any period anterior to that of 

 the Saxons. The facts of the case, to my mind at least, lead but to 

 one conclusion — that these implements were deposited in the cave 

 during the Preglacial period. The cave at the time of its discovery 

 (assuming the statement of the workmen to be true) was completely 

 blocked up, so that the ravine-side presented no concavity to indicate 

 its presence ; there were no traces of disturbance posterior to the 

 filling up of the cave either on the spot where they were found, or as 

 we were driving our adit thither. And, as 12 feet of the former 

 mouth of the cave have been cut away, we must double the distance 

 from the present entrance to the spot itself, which will thus be 24 

 feet. The motive certainly has yet to be assigned that would induce 

 a savage to excavate a trench 24 feet long with his miserable stone 

 implements, and consequently with great labour ; and, having excava- 

 ted it, again to fill it up to the very roof with the debris which he had 

 removed — earth, stones, and animal remains. The absence of char- 

 coal, pottery, and human bones precludes the idea of the cave ever 

 having been a place of sepulture, as was the cave close by, also one 

 on the northern flanks of the Mendips at Barrington-Comb, and a 

 third in Cheddar Cliffs. 



But, on the other hand, it may be said that the fact of their being 

 found in and around the same spot is a weighty argument in favour of 

 their introduction in the Post-glacial times. Had they been subjected 

 to violent watery action, they would, like most of the animal remains, 

 have been scattered confusedly through the matrix, and would not 

 have been found as they ware left by their former possessor. They 

 would moreover have lost their sharp edges. On this point, indeed, 

 they, as well as a large number of the animal remains, where slender 

 processes and points of bone are left uninjured (as, for instance, the 

 palatine process of the right maxilla of a Wolf), agree in shewing 

 that violent watery action had a very small share in filling the cave. 



I should infer that, as the dolomitic conglomerate of the roof and 

 walls gradually yielded to the attacks of the carbonic acid in the air, 

 the debris was gradually accumulated at the same time that the 

 Hyaenas from time to time brought in the remains of their victims. 

 On this hypothesis the fact of the occurrence of these implements in 



